


to stumble, and to steady myself again

by tinbox



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mentions of Shooting, a lil bit of hurt and comfort, because fletch's anger fascinated me, mentions of trauma, pre-relationship?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 06:38:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14014377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinbox/pseuds/tinbox
Summary: For all his good advice, Fletch isn’t always so good at asking for support himself. Later, he would remember this moment and think that maybe Jac is right, too.Or, about the ways they support each other.Episode-coda for 19x62.





	to stumble, and to steady myself again

**Author's Note:**

> A tiny flow-of-thought vignette. This takes places after Fletch has the conversation with Hanssen at the end of 19x62(?), with Jac still in hospital. I might have gotten the order of events confused and also fudged with the realism of how fast Jac'd recover from being operated on; suspension of disbelief for the sake of angst, folks!
> 
> tw: mentions of the shooting

In some ways, Fletch is sorry that Fredrik is dead.

Anger is so much more bearable when it has a target to aim at, after all.

But the futility of the anger he feels now, the slow simmer of it in his bones, bursting to get free, is a wave under his skin, waxing and waning. He wakes up with it, from dreams he doesn't want to think about; he forgets it in the soft busyness of getting the kids ready for school; he rediscovers it in the traffic jam, waiting for the light to change.

He remembers it, like an old friend, from the days after Natalie died. He knows that he is clinging onto it because anger is an illusion of control in the face of the uncontrollable, an activity when all activity ceases to hold meaning. He knows all of this.

He knows he's being unfair, aiming it at Hanssen.

But there is no one else left, and Henrik is there.

He sees the understanding in Hanssen's eyes, as he's standing there in Hanssen's office, receiving the acceptance of his new security plans. He knows Hanssen probably thinks he deserves it, and he feels a twinge of regret at that, but the wave is there again, crashing. He can't help it. It's the look in Hanssen's eye, like he expects to be punished yet like they're talking about this year's holiday rota, that sets him off. So he grinds his teeth. Closes the door. Leaves the man behind. Walks down the corridor. Absent-mindedly thinks of exit points, entrance points, blind corners, metal detectors, his empty room at home, the silence in the walls once the kids have gone to bed, the birthday present he had been planning already, the time it takes to walk down this corridor and down the steps and pull a trigger.

The hospital is much quieter now that day is changing into night. It grates at him because the noise had been easier to handle. Now the anger gets to keep simmering, unimpeded by distractions. He rushes back to Darwin. It's familiar ground, after all, and there are lights there, people there, even at this hour. He says good night to a couple of nurses. He checks the stats on a few patients. He catches the tail-end of the night shift rolling in. But it's not enough. The anger has been there all day. It never really left, he supposes, but for the first time that day, he feels like it's slipping out of his control, like he doesn't know what to do with it. He doesn't understand how Hanssen does it, keeping so cool. He remembers the first day of coming back to work after it all happened. It feels like that now, when everything was still gnawed raw, and he bites his tongue, breathes in deep, and tries to wait the anger out.

It persists.

And there is movement in the periphery of his vision. There is movement from one of the beds. There is movement where there really shouldn't be any at this time of night. He turns toward it, and there she is.

"What are you doing?" he's hissing out before he can stop himself, taking striding steps toward the bed in the patient room.

"What does it look like?" Jac says, in that way she always does when she thinks even answering is beneath her. "I'm getting up."

"You can't be serious."

But she is, already pulling back the sheets, legs over the side. He rushes to her and grabs at the fabric, and they play a brief tug-of-war before he manages to wrench it out of her fingers. "Lie back down, Jac. It's gone half eleven." He hears it come out fiercer than he intended. 

"I'm bored, _Fletch_." She says his name like she's digging her nails in, hackles raised. "I've been lying here all day. I can't sleep anymore."

"God's sake, you just had surgery!"

" _Minor_ surgery." She goes for the sheet again, but this time he's faster, and the anger is rising again, except this time it doesn't feel like anger, it feels like desperation, it feels like constantly swimming against a current, it feels like something bubbling over, and it comes out of his mouth, a sharp bark of a shout that might have just been her name.

And well, how _does_ Hanssen do it? There are days that are harder, and days that are better, but in the midst of all of those days, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it, to stop running over a list of things he should have done to spot the signs before it was too late. He can’t stop thinking about Raf in that lift all alone. And he knows he’s not being fair, but he cannot understand how Hanssen can still stay so calm, when he himself feels everything but, when at times - right now - he just feels lost.

He is acutely aware of her silence, of his fingers clutching the sheets on either side of her thighs, of his arms feeling suddenly weak where he leans on them, of a constricting tightness in his throat. "Please," he says and can't look at her.

He’s aware he sounds small.

It takes a few seconds of her scrutinizing him up close, too close, her breath on his skin, before she finally says: "Okay. Help me back down."

She lets him wrap his arms under hers, around her waist, and gently guide her back up the bed and down on the pillow, and it is strange, the way she feels solid and he feels himself shaking, clinging onto her. "Legs too," she says, and he moves them back under the sheets methodologically, one by one, before tucking the sheets back around her. "My pillow could do with a fluffing," she says, and he does that too, and when he's done that, he feels solidified, the shaking subsiding. He sits on the bed, the press of her thigh against his side strangely grounding. "I thought you were supposed to leave me to sleep."

He sighs and looks at her, finally. He's not used to seeing sympathy in Jac Naylor's eyes, but there is something like understanding in there when she looks at him now, and in the face of it he can't help spilling out. "I went to see Hanssen."

She raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah, just now. He's doing the rounds of all the staff. You know, regulation mandated counselling, the what-have-you, ticking boxes for HR. Fat load of nothing really."

"Ah. Managing the staff. Glad to hear I get to avoid it. The one good thing about being stuck in this boring bed."

"Well, silver linings and all that."

"You still haven't told me what I am supposed to do with my time if I'm not allowed to get out of this bed."

He cuts her a glare from the side of his eye. "Sleep, you pillock."

"I told you, I've slept all day. I'm not tired."

"I swear to god, if you don't even try, I'll knock you out with something."

"What, like one of your tedious stories about whatever vaguely amusing thing Theo did at bathtime?"

He huffs, half-heartedly. "Come off it, Jac. You love 'em really."

"Fat chance." She steeples her fingers over her abdomen. "Well, at least get me a magazine or something."

He does.

It takes him fifteen minutes of searching through the ward, trying not to wake up other patients as he tiptoes from room to room, trying to find the most gaudy, inane gossip magazine he can get his hands on. He delights in the way Jac's nose immediately scrunches up in disgust at the sight of it. "Enjoy," he grins at her, getting a glare in response. "And Naylor? If you try to get up from that bed again tonight, I'll cancel all electives for the rest of the week. Don't even think I wouldn't know."

"That suit has really gone to your head, hasn't it?" she bites back, but he can tell that despite what she claimed, the day is already catching up with her again, her glare a bit softer than it would normally be.

She makes him sit with her for another ten minutes or so, mocking the level of so-called journalism and, of course, telling her about the patients that day. In the warm glow of the bedside lamp, her eyelids start to droop, and finally her fingers grow lax, and the press of her thigh against his side continues to bleed the gasping flutter of grief from his body, but that last part she does not need to know. He’ll tell her in the morning about the way she drools slightly in her sleep. He might even tell her about the light snores if she’s feeling particularly prickly.

He leaves her to sleep. 

He hopes that the anger will grow gentler, one of these days.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I haven't got the voices down, even stylistic restrictions considering. Oh well. I hope you enjoyed! I just needed a bit of lowkey HC for Fletch.


End file.
